In this article Julian looks at the things in his studio he doesn’t use or need, both hardware and software, and considers how both getting too much gear and choosing to get rid of that gear are all part of a process.
We all love a pithy maxim and a phrase I’ve often used is “never mistake activity for achievement”. I didn’t know where that phrase came from but a quick Google revealed it to be one of many quotes attributed to John Wooden, someone who as a British person with no interest in basketball, I was previously unaware. But I discovered that quite a few excellent quotes I’d heard before, and more I hadn’t, came from this American basketball coach known as the ‘Wizard of Westwood’ due to his coaching success.
Back to audio, studios and production though. Getting and learning new gear can keep us busy, but busy doing what? I think there are two distinct phases in the gear-life of most audio people, and I suspect anyone who uses technology in their work: Phases I’ll call the acquisitive phase and the spartan phase. The first is characterised by a desire for more, the second by a desire for less.
Learning Audio Pre-Internet
When I started in audio there was little information around, the web didn’t quite exist yet and I learned the little I knew about the recording process as a combination of word of mouth and print media. This ‘starvation model’ of learning did result in deep thinking about the how and why of recording, I frequently found I had ‘invented’ techniques which were common practice, I just didn’t know what everyone else was doing. Working with limited information, making connections, reading between the lines and synthesising new information.
Today things couldn’t be more different. An enthusiastic budding engineer, rather than being presented with information slowly, each piece able to be fully digested before the next, is instead placed in front of the biggest 24 hour all you can eat buffet of knowledge, of variable quality it has to be said, and inevitably a greedy consumer of information like the 20 year old me is likely to gain only a superficial understanding of the subjects they are learning about. With practice and experience comes that most elusive thing, perspective. After all, to quote John Wooden a second time “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts”.
So many of us have an acquisitive phase in our learning but I’m pretty sure that just as many of us have an acquisitive stage in our gear lives too. Just as guitarists gain more and more instruments and pedals so engineers and producers gain gear both in hardware and in software. It takes someone who has a plugins folder which is too full to realise that they might have reached that point where they move from the acquisitive to the spartan, valuing the things they have for their quality rather than building a bigger pile of stuff. As a part of our regular Free Plugins posts I download and install every plugin we feature. However good they might be I’m almost always going to uninstall them, not because I don’t think they are useful but because I’d rather have a shorter plugins list than the option of that plugin for those times I might use it over my regular choices.
If you’re wondering what the exceptions are, at the moment they include Slate Digital Fresh Air, TSE BOD Bass Overdrive, Nembrini Clon Minotaur, TB Pro Audio GSat+, Metric Halo Thump and Valhalla Supermassive. That’s six plugins out of the 300+ I’ve installed. I would think that you probably only really need six of those 300 plugins too. The problem is that we don’t know which six. This is why what I’m saying isn’t that you shouldn’t try everything, that it’s somehow foolish to be greedy for knowledge and experience. You have to have gone through that phase to realise that you don’t really need all the ‘stuff’.
To put it another way, and this time I’m not quoting John Wooden, we’ve all heard that “money doesn’t make you happy”. However I only really believe the rich people who say that! So on to gear. We know that there are sound economic arguments for managing your inventory of gear (assuming that you have enough to credit the word ‘inventory’). If you are running a business, or even if you’re not, then there might be sound reasons to divest yourself of hardware you’re not using but this ‘Spartan’ phase I’m talking about here isn’t about managing your inventory. I’ve been making a real effort to reduce, to clear out and to simplify my gear life and my decisions aren’t based on the value of the gear I’m moving on to new homes, indeed much of it isn’t valuable at all, however the space it occupies is valuable.
Fewer Things, More Focus
Firstly on a practical level, we talk about workflow all the time. Often that is about choosing a particular tool which gives better results, or a keyboard shortcut or SoundFlow macro which will save time but if you’re digging through boxes of redundant rubbish to find something, or if like me you currently have three audio interfaces connected, each of which you think you ‘need’ then maybe what you actually ‘need’ is to ditch two of them. Hardware is there all the time, even when you’re not using it and it’s getting in the way 24/7. This brings me to the second point. The economic argument for moving gear on is easy when the gear is valuable. A not-too-old Mac probably should be moved on before it becomes something to hold doors open with. Something vintage might well go up in value the longer you keep it so that’s more tricky but for the kind of semi-worthless tat clogging up my studio (old MIDI controllers, notepad mixers, the inevitable box of redundant cables) there is a more persuasive economic argument for getting rid of the lot. Studio space is valuable, not just in terms of the aforementioned ‘workflow’ but also in cash terms. If you live in a city you might well know the value per square foot of your studio but even if you live somewhere where space is at less of a premium, it still has a definite monetary value and for much of the stuff in studios, the space it occupies when placed on the floor is probably less than the value of the floor it occupies. That makes me look around my space very differently, especially when I’ve still got a bruise on my foot from the guitar stand which fell on it yesterday because it was stacked on the case I was looking for an insert lead in…
There is also a non-monetary reason for a clear out. Simplicity and lack of clutter promotes focus, and reduces stress. Ultimately the thing which limits our productivity isn’t our gear, it’s us. I can achieve more in an hour with focus, away from distractions, than I can in a day without. And if creativity and the generation of good, original ideas is what our work relies on that multiplier goes up significantly. Inspiration strikes but it has to find you working…
It’s Not About the Money
The irony of this streamlining of gear is that it can actually be more expensive. I’ve been looking for a way to add more synthesised sounds to my live keyboard rig. My Nord Electro covers all the pianos and organs I need but more and more I’ve been considering getting a small monosynth for leads and ‘noises’. I’m reluctant to add a second keyboard to the rig. My preferred options would be to upgrade to a Nord Stage. I could have a physically nearly identical keyboard which would cover all the sounds I needed. I find the considerable cost very off-putting at the moment but if I buy that mono synth, add the risers to my stand, incorporate a small mixer into the rig and cart this bigger, more complicated rig around night after night for a year or so and I’ll probably think that the extra expense might not be so bad. Simplicity is valuable because it leaves us free to work, however it doesn’t necessarily come for free, sometimes it’s more expensive!
Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko